Physician, Heal Thyself

At the beginning of this year there came an announcement regarding the further ‘institutionalisation’ of the Transcendental Meditation programme by the medical establishment. The January 2016 issue of Chicago Medicine presented the news that the first-ever TM elective course is being offered at a major medical school in the United States. The course, “Physician Wellness through Transcendental Meditation”, is now available at the Stritch School of Medicine at Loyola University in Chicago.

The article noted that the participating students are giving new meaning to the adage “Physician, Heal Thyself” as they learn about the science and methodology behind Transcendental Meditation as well as experiencing the benefits of the technique for themselves. According to the magazine; “Attending physicians and students reported that TM added balance to their lives. Having TM as a tool means our students can recommend something that they know will help, based upon their own experience and upon substantial evidence. They can avoid burnout and maintain their enthusiasm for practicing medicine. They can also become the role models (as doctors) we all aspire to be.”

It is interesting to note in light of this development that it is 45 years since the founder of TM, Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, developed a systematic course to help people understand the theory underlying the actual practice of the TM technique. He named this course the Science of Creatives Intelligence, or SCI for short, and presented it as a necessary precursor to all other forms of learning so that the inter-connectedness of all knowledge could be appreciated.

The basic premise of SCI is that knowledge is structured in consciousness – which means the nature or level of an individual’s awareness determines both what he experiences in the world around him and what he can know. As a person practicing TM grounds more of his or her awareness in the unified field, the deepest level of creation, more access is being gained to a realm where all knowledge is integrated. The student thereby develops an intuitive grasp of what he knows in its most fundamental form and begins to perceive subtle relationships between different disciplines.

This increasingly holistic appreciation of connectedness between all forms of knowledge helps one overcome the bane of modern education which is the fragmentation of various disciplines to the point where experts in one field are incapable of communicating the relevance of their expertise to those in another seemingly unrelated field. The enlivenment of whole brain functioning from TM practice is also important to the personal development of any scientist or academic because currently it is possible to be the holder of six university degrees and still be a completely dysfunctional human being.

A more holistic approach to medical practice will be the likely outcome for those fortunate Chicago participants in that first-ever TM course at the medical school. This is most desirable because for years within the Western medical profession, all illnesses were considered separate and distinct in cause and condition. Funding for health research and treatment continues to be allocated ‘by disease’ and hopefully before too long there will be more of an understanding of not only what are the distinguishing characteristics of each disease but also what diseases have in common.

The approach of TM and related Vedic health technologies (see: www.getbalance.co.nz ) is deeper than that of conventional medicine’s drugs and surgery regime in that it identifies a stress disorder in our physiology that is associated with and underlies all disease, and proposes that any disease takes hold when any person loses touch with their innermost level of consciousness. As mentioned before, this level of the unified field is the home of natural law and therefore a most potent source of ‘internal’ medicine. The inspiring results of long-term research on the health benefits of TM speak for themselves in this regard.